Nedbank scored big with its technological innovations in its 2020 annual financial results, more than doubling retail digital sales compared to the previous year.
Among the key innovations by the bank in the year, Nedbank integrated quick response (QR) code technology into its Money App to enable customers to make contactless withdrawals at ATMs around the country.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, banks and payment service providers have been introducing various measures to combat the spread of the virus by reducing the direct handling of cash during transactions.
Announcing the bank’s performance for the year ended December, Nedbank says during the lockdown, its digital capabilities were vital as it launched various innovations such as Avo (its super app).
It also introduced more retail digital onboarding (Eclipse) capabilities to new products such as investments, cards and overdrafts, and started the rollout of juristic client onboarding, says the bank.
“This resulted in retail digital sales increasing to 49% of all sales (2019: 21%) and digitally active clients increasing by 25% to 2.2 million. Our digital successes were underpinned by our Managed Evolution technology strategy, which is materially complete for all the foundation projects and overall 78% complete (2019: 70%),” says Nedbank.
During the period under review, Nedbank Group says it delivered an improved financial performance in the second half of 2020, as headline earnings for the year ended 31 December 2020 declined by 56.5%, compared to a decline of 69.2% in the first half.
The bank says headline earnings for the year were affected by higher impairments and lower revenues, “the latter mainly due to lower levels of client activity and the impact of lower interest rates on endowment income”.
Nedbank has made inroads with digital solutions in recent months. The bank launched the Rola digital finance offering, which is built on its vehicle asset finance application programming interface (API) for clients in Nedbank's API Marketplace.
Nedbank said at the time that by linking into the API, Rola has made it possible for visitors to the Rola Web site to get an accurate idea of the vehicle finance amount they may qualify for.
Clients can then shop for the car they want before applying for the finance they need – all enabled online.
Nedbank launched its API Marketplace in 2018, with several products available, including vehicle and asset finance, personal loans, Nedbank Wallet, Nedbank Open Data, Nedbank Payments, Nedbank Rewards, Nedbank Accounts and Nedbank Clients.
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